Grant Morrison has an interesting quote regarding what people will miss should they eschew reading comic books in favor of only watching funny book movies. It’s intriguing, because I have lately been wrestling with my own contempt for the printed formula while simultaneously jacking it to the cinematic flavor. What would I be missing if I got off the comic book Ferris Wheel?
Welcome to Monday Morning Commute - the weekly tribal meeting where those upon the SpaceShip Omega share what they’re interested in during the next seven or so days. The exercise is designed to pollinate each other’s lives with both shared and new arts and farts, in an effort to mitigate the tediousness that Existence can become.
Time is short, let’s tug on one another.
Here is a fairly unexciting debut trailer for ABC’s Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. You have Coulson (and while it is antithetical to say, I don’t really care about him) and friends tackling strange events and stuff. My guess? Superhero procedural. I’ll be there, even if I am fairly apathetic towards this first glimpse.
Fuck. Comics Alliance has long been my favorite comic book site. Sure it is owned by those same pigs at AOL who shut them down. Sure. However, I often found them a balm to soothe the agitating bullshit of websites like CBR. A site which should be more accurately known as Slinging The Corporate Titles Through Inflated Nonsense Reviews. Okay, that isn’t the most catchy title. But still. Despite being owned by those pigs, they often generated wonderful articles, entertaining news, and…other positive adjectives. It’s with a heavy heart that I read about their closure, and I wish all of them well.
Duela Dent is coming to the New 52! Hide your kids, hide your wives. Jesus Christ, talk about a stale cultural reference. Fuck you, Caff! Anyways, yeah. Joker’s Daughter is coming to the refried DC Universe. Perhaps this excites you. Frankly, I didn’t even know the Joker had a daughter. I understand this is a cascading wave of comic book failure raising towards me.
Pop quiz! How do you give me a boner? Oh, okay. Yes, yes, yes. Aside from showing me pictures of Benedict Cumberbatch in Star Trek Into Darkness while whispering, “All of this will be yours in a Star Wars format.” You do it by showing me a preview of the upcoming Brian K. Vaughan collaboration with Marcos Martin.
I want you to consult your medium.
And I’m not talkin’ about that gargantuan-racked Gypsy babe you met at the bus stop. Do I think it’s righteous that she wore a revealing shawl and was jambox-blastin’ an Among the Living cassette? Yes. Do I think that she actually has psychic powers? No. Unless you like waking up in another state to find that you’ve been drugged, robbed, and’re wanted on an arson charge, you’re goin’ to want to stay away from her.
Trust me, I know from experience.
Anyways, the sort of medium we’re dealin’ with today ain’t of the supernatural variety. Well, not literally (we’ll come back to that). See, the word “medium” comes from the old-tyme Ancients’ expression for “in the middle.” As such, there’re a whole mess of ways to apply the term. Yes, that’s why when you go to Dunkin Donuts, the serving size of hot dirt-water that’s larger than the small but smaller than the large is called medium!
Ta-dah!
When takin’ a stroll across the Arts & Entertainment Dance Hall, we need to look at media as the ways in which creators express themselves. In a sense, any given medium is the means by which a transfer occurs from the mind of the Creator to the mind of the Viewer. It’s actually an alarmingly simple process: an idea is in the Creator’s mind, the Creator shapes some sort of artifact, the Viewer experiences said artifact, and now the same idea is in the Viewer’s mind! Voila!
Stephen King describes the process in On Writing:
Look — here’s a table covered with a red cloth. On it is a cage the size of a small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink-rimmed eyes. In its front paws is a carrot-stub upon which it is contentedly munching. On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral 8.
Do we see the same thing? We’d have to get together and compare notes to make absolutely sure, but I think we do. There will be necessary variations, of course…
I sent you a table with a red cloth on it, a cage, a rabbit, and the number eight in blue ink. You got them all, especially that blue eight. We’ve engaged in an act of telepathy. No mythy-mountain shit; real telepathy.
That’s right, you degenerate broads and bastard boozers clinging to the railing of Spaceship OL — every time you read a book or listen to an album or play a video game, you’re on the receiving end of some genuine telepathy! And when you find it in your soul to create some art? When you show someone the landscape you painted or the sonnet you penned? Yeah, you’ve got it — you’re on the transmitting end of the thought-transfer!
So what’s this all gettin’ at? Well, simply put, I want every goddamn one of you to declare your medium-allegiance. At the end of the day, in which art form are you most invested? Which mode of expression sweep-picks your heartstrings? What is it about this medium that gets your blood pumpin’ and spirit swirlin’?
[What is your medium of choice?]
Welcome to Buy These F**king Comics!, the weekly column where we share the various sequential treats we’re gobbling up off the shelves. The wonder of this column is audience participation. No shirts, no shoes required! Just sit there in your dingy underwear, your sweat, and seminal soaked (oh man am I typecasting our lot or what?) t-shirts and recommend a slurry of titles for me to check out. Don’t know what being snapped into brown plastic bags this week? Hit up Comic List.
There ain’t a multitude of titles hitting the shelves this week, and that’s aiight for two reasons. First, it saves my pittance of an allowance from evaporating with over a week to go until the next paycheck. I am a poor ass academic surviving on tutoring wages, though to be fair, what I am paid for what I do is patently ridiculous. Second, the comic books that are dropping have my tits tweaked. My nips are a deep, hungry red, begging for the funny rags to fiddle them.
This den of perversion and adolescent banality is Buy These F**king Comic Books. Within these walls we shall all share the comic books we’re excited for on a given week. I know my tastes sucks raw farts out of my dead grandmother’s ass, so remind me of the titles I missed. If you don’t know what is arriving on a particular Wednesday, Comic List will help you out.
Alan Moore doesn’t like Grant Morrison. That shouldn’t be surprising. Alan Moore doesn’t like anything that isn’t wizardry, orgies involving mythical creatures, or giving birds a home in his beard. After taking a continual beating from everyone’s favorite comics scribe turned necromancer, Grant Morrison has responded to Moore’s criticism.
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